I signed up for a one year subscription to the premium service (which includes worldwide databases) and have a lot of time on my hands. PM me if you have any requests, although I’m not even going to try the 1940 census until they get it indexed. Keep in mind that the more information you provide, the more likely there will be results.
Wow, that is really, really nice of you, Chefguy. I imagine you will be getting many requests 
I signed up for a free week, but was weirded out how looking for something would produce no results, and then 3 days later I’d get an email saying they’d found ‘something’, only to find it was something that HAD been there…it just hadn’t shown the first time. >.<
Interesting as hell though!
No interest at this point. People are generally reluctant to share family information with internet strangers, and I can’t blame them for that. I figured that I’ve been here for nine years and have a large post count, so some might feel I’m trustworthy enough.
All information is treated as confidential, of course. I’ve been doing genealogy research for about 14 years on my own family, and have helped others with theirs. Ancestry.com can be glitchy at times, particularly if you’re not careful about what sort of parameters you give it for searching.
I’ve always been curious about my stepdad, but didn’t think to research him when I was subbed to Ancestry last year.
So PM is being sent and thanks for offering!
Chefuy, if you really mean it and it won’t put you out, I may PM you some info - I recently found out my original birth name (I was adopted) and the name of my birth mother. I’d be interested to see.
This is SO nice, and really, really neat.
I love this place. <3
Out of curiosity…has anyone ever put together Doper t-shirts? I’d be proud to wear one.
Hi! My Doper name is Taomist! :p:p
ChefGuy solved the mystery of my stepdad’s name change – not just his last name, but also his first and middle names. I knew he’d been born with a different name but never knew why. Was he on the lam? Witness protection? 
Anyway, ChefGuy/s search revealed that he’d been named for his father, who was his mother’s first husband. It looks like his mom’s second husband adopted him and changed his names. There must have been some animosity. Why else change the perfectly fine name of Benjamin to William?
Many thanks to ChefGuy. Mystery solved.
My pleasure. They don’t always turn out so well. I’m looking at a couple of other Dopers’ families at the moment and ran into a dead end on one of them pretty fast. Very frustrating, but that’s how it goes sometimes. The third one doesn’t look especially promising either, as the first name I ran is so common that there were some 80,000 hits on it. It’s all fun, though.
Missy2u: Fire away. I won’t promise instant results, but you won’t know until we try. Again, more information is better than less, so places of birth, places people have lived, dates (if possible), etc.
Thanks for trying, Chefguy–you did good. I just sent the info you dug up on Jacob to Ontario, to a woman whose great-grandfather was named Jacob [Ruber]–so I think I’ve located a cousin already.
Nice! I found a first cousin a few years ago that I never knew I had (never met anybody from my father’s side, including the man himself). We’ve gotten together several times now. In fact, they’re coming into town this weekend and I’ll make brunch for us. Sometimes things go right.
PM sent Thanks!!!
I sent a PM for individual family members.
A more generic request - one of my family members showed up on the 1910 census in Pecos County, and there was a note in the margin marking out several of the records with the phrase “Coal Bed Row”. I was wondering if you can even find anything on Ancestry about that, or if it’s too person-oriented for that kind of research
It’s pretty much just people oriented. Coal Bed Row sounds like it may have been temporary quarters for mine workers. I know that census takers today enumerate temporary living quarters and even homeless areas under bridges and such. Today we use codes on the forms for all that, but back then it was just hand notations, which of course appear on photocopies of the originals.
Do you find it works well? I’m curious, but I do have a cousin that did for a hobby, my mom’s side. This was at least ten years ago, I think before that website. We got photos and copies of immigration documents.
In one, a married couple were called laborers.
My mom: “That just means they were farmers!”
Me: “I didn’t think they were royalty! They were workers. <aside> I’m just happy they weren’t inmates.”
Usually, in official census documents, “laborer” is used in a city. “farmer” is used for people who lived in rural areas and were truly farmers.
My experience. I also have a subscription to ancestry.
Chefguy: I no sooner posted this thread than I happened to scroll down a bit and saw your thread.
If you want to take a crack at my family tree with the info provided, by all mean swing away. 
As soon as I saw that letter I thought: yikes! What a gold mine of information! It would need to be distilled into a tree of some sort before trying to jump into research.
I can do that, but it will have to wait until later this evening or tomorrow afternoon.
Spoke too soon; I had the working copy I had used earlier with me.
Thomas Sutton - Marie Duffy
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William Sutton - Mary Biddle
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Thomas Sublet Sutton - Nancy Jane Taylor
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Uncle Owen skipped this part as he probably assumed we already knew
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Owen Sutton
That’s about all I have.
Looks good. Now if you can attach some dates/places to the names, we could be in business.